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February 3, 2025

Does VPN Drain Your Battery?

VPN is a major tool that many people use. It is used on an individual level and the corporate level. It is used to enhance your privacy over the internet so no third party can intervene in your online activities. VPN does not affect your device performance or speed. However, a common concern arises regarding whether the VPN drains your phone battery and on other devices. Like many other applications that use some of your device’s battery in the background, VPN also utilizes some. How does VPN drain your phone battery?, and where does a VPN use your device battery? We will discuss all such aspects in this blog.

How Does a VPN Drain Your Phone Battery?

There are VPN services that can slow down your connection or even make your phone battery drain faster, but they are not reliable VPN service providers. However, the best VPN service providers may use the battery of your device, but the ratio is very low. Since a VPN encrypts your data, due to encryption overhead, around 5% to 15% of your battery is used, which doesn’t impact you a lot on your device.

Many unreliable VPNs out there drain your device battery in just an hour or so. However, here are the reasons that VPNs drain phone batteries:

Encryption Overhead

When data is encrypted and decrypted during the data transmission on a VPN, additional memory and processing time are used; this process is called encryption overhead. It also depends on the encryption methods used in the VPN.

Internet Traffic

When you connect to a VPN, your data passes over an encrypted VPN tunnel and then comes to you. This is a nonstop process, so the reason for battery drainage is that the device is constantly in use. Downloading large files uses more battery. You will not encounter any battery drainage issues while using iProVPN while downloading or streaming content.

Weak Data Signals

3G, 4G, and 5G use a minimum of phone battery as they do not need to connect hard. However, if your signals are weak, then your phone uses extra power. It will drain your battery. Using a VPN on poor signals uses more power. Regardless of whether you are connected with a VPN or not.

CPU Usage

Your device’s CPU spends plenty of processing energy when encryption and decrypting information as you connect to a VPN. Furthermore, it establishes an encrypted tunnel for the information to travel over and demands an ongoing connection connecting your device and the VPN server.

Battery Drainage Test—How to Conduct It?

To test how much VPN drains your phone battery, follow these simple steps:

Step 1:

Fully charge your phone and download the VPN apps you want to check the battery drain. However, you can also install multiple VPN applications to compare the results.

Step 2:

Install any battery drainage checker app on your phone; you can find a lot of apps on Google Play Store and Apple Store.

Step 3:

For the initial test, use your phone without connecting it to the VPN for about an hour. Note down the battery percentage at the start and then check after about an hour of using your phone.

Step 4:

Now connect your phone to a VPN and use it for an hour to test it properly for browsing, online streaming, and playing online games. Note down the battery percentage at the start of use and the end.

Step 5:

To test battery drainage for multiple VPN apps, you need to again fully charge your phone to 100% and repeat the steps to get the right results.

Step 6:

After getting results from all the VPN apps, now compare your results from the initial tests. It will determine which VPN has drained most and least of your phone battery.

Tips to Protect Your Battery from Draining

Following are some useful tips that can help you save your phone from battery drainage:

1) Exit Unwanted Apps

Apps that are unnecessarily running in the background of your phone can be a reason for quick battery drainage. Disable such apps or uninstall them.

2) Update Phone Settings

To save your phone battery, small settings can have a big impact, such as dimming your screen brightness, using apps in battery saver mode, and keeping irrelevant notifications muted.

3) Use a Power Saving VPN

Use a battery-friendly VPN like iProVPN, which does not consume a lot of your phone battery with built-in battery saver features.

4) Malware In the Device

If there is malware present in your phone and secretly running in the background of your device, it can also be the reason for your phone battery drainage.

5) Use Power Bank

If your phone battery drains fast, then you can carry a portable charger with you to connect your device anywhere and anytime.

6) Using an Old Phone

When you follow all the tips to save your power and still you are facing the battery drainage issue, then you must get a new phone with efficient battery performance.

Features That Prevent VPN Drain Your Phone Battery

Here are some of the best features that VPN services provide you, like iProVPN, which can help you save your phone battery and processing power.

1) Use Kill Switch:

If you enable this feature on your VPN and your VPN connection drops, it will disconnect your internet so your privacy will remain maintained. This way your battery will not use extra power.

2) Use Split Tunneling:

Enable split tunneling from settings on the browser or apps you want to access through VPN. This will save your phone battery from unnecessary power consumption. Only those apps will run on the VPN that you had allowed from the settings.

3) VPN on Router

Phone devices consume more battery when encrypting and decrypting data using mobile data. By configuring a VPN on the router, the router will manage to do the encryption and decryption of data, and your device, including phones and others, will be just accepting the safe data. Preventing your phone from battery drainage.

4) Using the Right Protocol:

It is also another major aspect that can prevent your phone from battery drain. You can select the right protocol that uses less battery. Advanced VPN protocols like WireGuard are friendly, lightweight, and efficient.

Is There Any Impact of VPN Protocol on Battery Drainage?

VPN protocols are the root of the VPN; your battery will be saved if you use the right lightweight VPN protocol. In this matter, WireGuard is the best VPN protocol. Moreover, if you are using free VPN services, then it’s obvious that your battery will drain quickly. Using free VPNs will show you a lot of ad pop-ups on different apps, which will drain the battery as well as make them unsafe to use. Use iProVPN, which has a built-in ad blocker feature and will not drain any extra battery of your phone.

WireGuard VPN Protocol

As mentioned, this VPN protocol is best for saving your device battery, as it uses fewer lines of code for processing, so ultimately it saves your phone power. It is considered to be a very lightweight protocol. It is fast and efficient and uses advanced cryptographic algorithms for high security.

OpenVPN Protocol

Before WireGuard, OpenVPN, an open-source VPN technology, was commonly used. It requires a lot of processing power as it has a lot of lines of code to process, which results in a drain on your phone’s battery.

IKEv2 VPN Protocol

IKEv2 is not used individually; it is combined with another strong protocol of IPSec. This protocol is best for phones; if your internet connection drops, IKEv2 instantly connects to the VPN. So, whenever your internet connection resumes, you don’t need to manually turn on the VPN; it will automatically get connected.

Conclusion

Just like other applications, VPN also consumes your battery. However, it is concerning if your VPN drain your phone battery faster than normal. Mostly free VPNs or VPNs whose security isn’t strong and consume a lot of your device’s battery, because they do not block ads showing on the screen or use a protocol that uses more battery. But there are other factors as well that can impact your battery, including having unnecessary apps on your phone and high brightness on your phone. Also, not putting unimportant notifications on mute. It’s also preferable that you change your old devices once their performance gets slow without any known reason.

Additionally, always use a reliable VPN service that does not drain your device battery quickly, just like iProVPN, as it has several battery-saving features like a kill switch and split tunneling. Also, you can configure a VPN on your router to save your device battery.

FAQs

  • Which is the best VPN that protects the device's battery?

    Without any option, iProVPN is the best VPN that does not consume a lot of your device battery.

  • Does iProVPN use extra battery power when the screen is turned off?

    If your screen is turned off or apps are running in the background. IProVPN with battery-saving features will not drain any extra battery power of your device.

  • If I keep the PN on for a long time on my device, will it drain my phone battery?

    It depends on which VPN service you are using; you can keep iProVPN turned on on your devices for a long time and will see no irrelevant battery drainage.

  • Is an outdated device the reason for quick battery drainage?

    Yes! With other factors, this is one of the reasons, if you are using an old device, it will drain your battery faster. It is advisable when your phone is old enough and its performance gets slow, then change your device soon.

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